Cursed (The Brookehaven Vampires #4) (61 page)

Right there on the floor of the hospital, Oliver pulled me into his arms, and I cried against his chest while he held me tight.

Amber bandaged my wrist before moving on to Carter’s/Oliver’s needed stitches. Amber doctored his head, giving him the stitches he required to stop the bleeding. Once she was done, he scooped me up in his arms and moved us to
a loveseat that was there in the room. He held me in his lap while I calmed down.

Oliver’s body was recovering quickly, and Amber had returned to his side. She was looking over his wounds while he (Carter)
told Felix exactly what had happened.

“I was so afraid that if your body died, you would go with it,” I said once I had calmed down. In the hopes Amber
wouldn’t hear me, I kept my words ever so quiet and against Carter’s chest.

“So was I,” Oliver responded, his voice just as low as mine. He squeezed me a little tighter.

It was a selfish thought, but at that moment, I wanted him to quit his job. “This could’ve been you,” I whispered. I looked up into the eyes of my friend, knowing my boyfriend was the one looking back at me.

“
I’ve been doing this for a long time, and nothing like this has ever happened to me before now.” While still cradling me in his arms, he brushed my hair from my face, his fingers lingering.

“But it happened tonight,” I argued, working my way from his grip and settling on the loveseat beside him. They weren’t his fingers. They were Carter’s, and they didn’t feel right touching me the way Oliver always touched me.

“Because it wasn’t me,” he retorted, his voice growing a little louder. “I’ve been trained, Laney. Carter hasn’t.”

“But it
could’ve been you!” I shouted, trying to get my point heard.

T
hen I realized Amber was still in the room. She’d heard my words.

She
spun around to face Felix, her dress and coat flaring out around her. “This is what you have been researching?” she snapped, her blue-green eyes narrowing on him. She looked to me and then to Carter (Oliver). Then her gaze moved to Oliver who had been released from his straps and was now sitting up in the hospital bed and sipping my blood from a cup. He was content with my blood this way, and he wasn’t bothered by the fact someone else was comforting me.

In Amber’s eyes, I had been arguing with Carter, crying, being held and comforted by
someone who was not my mate. And Oliver, my vampire mate, didn’t seem to mind.

Amber was a pureblood vampire, an old one at that. She had seen plenty in her life, and our behavior
wasn’t something bonded vampires allowed.

She was quick to put things together.

“You should have told me,” she said to Felix, turning her glare back on him. I was thankful she hadn’t turned it on me. “Do you no longer trust me?” she questioned.

“I do not know who you have been associating with lately. Perhaps someone could have swayed you.”

“How dare you!” she snapped. She was frightening when she was angry.

“You are the one who told me to stay away from you,” he said coolly, his sky-blue eyes moving away from Amber’s stare. He began checking Oliver’s (Carter’s) vitals and his healing wounds.

“I was angry!” she spat. “As if you have never done the same?”

His eyes returned to hers.

She stood a little taller and put her shoulders back as she faced him. It was clear she had no plans of backing down.

Felix’s expression change
d. He looked angry as his eyes stayed on Amber’s.

“Well, this is very entertaining and all, but I think I’d like to go home now,” Carter said, interrupting the argument Amber and Felix were about to have.

While Felix and Amber continued to glare at each other, Carter swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed and examined his (Oliver’s) healing body. He peeled back the bandage on his hand, amazed at how quickly Oliver’s body was recovering.

I turned to Oliver in Carter’s body. “Why?” I asked. Carter’s blue eyes fell on mine. “Why does my blood heal you?” I questioned the man before me—the body of my friend who was housing my boyfriend. I gestured to Oliver’s body as he was standing. Oliver’s green eyes fell on us. “Why does only my blood heal you?” I questioned, irritation apparent in my voice.

Very seriously, Carter’s blue eyes held mine as Oliver brushed my hair away from my face.

I was tempted to slap his hand away. How dare he act as if life was normal and okay.

“Because you are meant to be mine,” he said softly.

Everything changed then. My frustration and anger slipped away. Tears sprang to my eyes. They were the right words, the
ones I needed to hear, but they came from the wrong mouth.

I said nothing, I couldn’t speak. This nightmare was never-ending!

Oliver wrapped his (Carter’s) arms around me and pulled me closer, pressing his lips to my forehead. The wrong lips. “I love you,” he whispered.

I pulled out of his grip and moved away, nodding in response. I quickly brushed away a fallen tear.

Silently, Amber tore her eyes away from Felix and glided out of the room. She said nothing to any of us, she just left.

I figured she was pissed
because none of us had told her what was going on. I didn’t blame her. I would’ve been pissed, too.

Then I thought of Kiera. I really
didn’t know how she would handle such news. But she was Kiera. She was self-centered. She would probably worry about the wedding, not the fact our boyfriends had switched places.

A moment later, Amber returned. She had a black hoodie in her hand. Without a word, she handed it to the
Carter in Oliver’s body. He was slow to put it on, careful not to hurt his still healing injuries.

Amber crossed her arms and looked at none of us.

Oliver stood, holding out a hand to me. I didn’t take it. He quickly put his hands in his front pockets after I stood.

“We
aren’t going back to the apartment until the window is fixed and…” Oliver said, trailing off as the usual realization that our apartment would never be safe enough hit him, yet again.

“Julz’s?” I questioned.

“Uh, no,” he said. “Isaac will give up my old bed for you and me.” He nodded in the direction of his body. “Not you and me,” he said, pointing at his (Carter’s) chest. “We can’t tell them.”

“You can stay with me,” Amber said, finally breaking her silence. “My place is small, but I will make room for the three of you.”

“That is very kind of you, Ambrose,” Felix told her, finally breaking his own angry silence.

“You say
that as if I am not normally so.” Her arms were still folded over her chest while she glared at him from across the room.

“Well…” he began.

Had he lost his mind!

Amber slammed her delicate fists down at her sides. “Felix Leonidas Ryant!” She stopped herself from continuing. She glared at him. “I am done with you,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

She turned to go, but he stepped forward and caught her arm. She looked back at him, her long hair partially covering her face.

“Please, Ambrose. Do not give up on me, just yet,” Felix pleaded.

I shared a look with both Oliver and Carter.

Amber looked away from Felix. Very faintly, she said, “My heart can no longer wait.” She pulled her
arm free of his grip and left the room, her heels echoing in the silence.

Felix
just stood there, silent, in the center of the room, staring after Amber while she walked away.

“We should go,” Oliver said.

“Right,” Felix responded, his voice quieter than I had ever heard it.

He led the three of us to his office where we found Amber waiting outside of her own, right next door to his. She had removed her white doctor’s coat.

They said nothing to each other. Amber wouldn’t even look at Felix.

He gestured for her to go ahead, and she walked just
in front of him all the way to his car. Amber silently climbed into the front passenger seat, and the three of us climbed into the back.

Carter winced as the seatbelt caught him across the shoulder. “I’m okay, Laney,” he said as I watched him closely. Those were the only words spoken the entire ride.

Felix drove us to the university. He parked in the faculty lot, like usual, and he walked us to Amber’s apartment under the English department. Then to my surprise, he stayed, and the two of them set to work trying to figure out how to break the curse that had been put on my two favorite men.

After what
I’d just witnessed between them, I wondered if they’d had some sort of silent, telepathic conversation the rest of us hadn’t heard. I also wondered if what just happened was just another day in their lives

How many times had Amber told Felix she was done with him? How many times had he upset her?

Perhaps this was just what they did, for the last thousand-plus years. That didn’t seem exhausting, at all…

The three of us took a seat on the floor, our backs against the wall so we could watch Felix and Amber try
ing to solve the riddle that had become our lives.

Amber headed down the hall and returned
a moment later with several journals like the one I’d been reading before Felix had taken it away. She set the journals on the coffee table. Felix took a seat on the sofa, his body taking up just about the entire thing. Amber settled herself in the balloon chair across from him.

Oh, how I wanted to get my hands on those journals.

Eventually, the three of us fell asleep leaning on each other, while listening to Felix go over all that had happened in the past couple of weeks. Amber added her input when she felt necessary. They were amazing together, when they weren’t fighting. They finished each other’s sentences and thoughts, and together, they came up with answers they were unable to complete on their own. It was exhausting to watch. Plus, we’d all had a pretty rough night.

When I woke the next morning, my body hurt from sleeping on the floor and at a weird angle. Oliver and Carter began to stir as I pushed myself up and out of Oliver’s grip. Apparently
he’d held me all night, and Carter had been curled up right beside us. Kiera would have freaked! Like full on had a heart attack.

Felix and Amber were in the kitchen. I could hear them speaking softly. Well, she was speaking softly, he was trying. Not succeeding, but trying.

After the three of us pulled ourselves up off the floor, Oliver and I groaning as we stretched, we headed for the small kitchen.

“So,
have you found anything helpful?” Oliver asked when we found Felix and Amber in the kitchen. Felix was leaning against the counter, and Amber was sitting at the table having a cup of tea.

Amber rose,
shaking her head as she made her way across the kitchen to look over the injuries on Oliver’s body. Her beautiful hair slipped forward as she bent to get a closer look at the faint mark across his chest. The wounds had disappeared, and only the faint lines of where they had been remained, for now. I imagined those would soon be gone too.

“Sadly, we have not,” she said as she straightened. Her focus settled on Oliver (in Carter’s body). “I fear that if this curse is not soon lifted, it may become permanent.”

My stomach dropped, and even turned. Had it not been empty, we might’ve seen its contents right there on Amber’s immaculate kitchen floor.

Laney’s were the only emotions I could actually read, clearly. Maybe it was because the body I was in was bonded to her. That was my best guess. That being said, it kinda sucked, because the emotion I felt coming from her when Ambrose told us that Oliver and I might be stuck in each other’s bodies for good was so strong, I thought it might bring me to my knees. Again. And that was saying a lot considering what I’d just survived.

That poisoned dragon claw
was nasty business. I didn’t quite understand why Laney’s blood was a cure-all for Oliver’s body, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth either.

I mean, who would’ve really died? Would it have been me? Would I have died in his body, or would he have died because I’m an inexperienced idiot?

I had no business being out there with those vampires. Felix should’ve known this. He thinks I’m stronger and more capable than I really am. And maybe, in my own body, I might be, but as Oliver, I just made him suck.

The only good thing about the injuries, which were healing super quick, was that I, as Oliver,
was given a couple days to recover. This meant I didn’t need to pretend to be him outside the apartment for a couple of days. And now, with Ambrose helping Felix search for a remedy to our problem, maybe there was still hope for us.

Felix took the three of us to breakfast that morning. He invited Ambrose, but she politely declined because she had classes to teach.

I don’t think that was the only reason. I caught her emotions. Granted I still sucked at figuring out what most of them meant or who they came from, but Professor Amber’s emotions were very clear. She loved Felix. A lot. But she was hurt, and feeling betrayed.